


all lit up

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 08:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13498120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Gordon and Raina and the sunrise.





	all lit up

It’s instinct. Or perhaps it’s habit; she has made a career out of carefully choreographed encounters. Whatever it is, the end result is her hand moving from the blanket-covered stone beneath her to the larger hand only inches away.

“Sorry,” she says, pulling instantly back.

He’s so damn fast though and catches her fingertips. “Does it hurt?” His voice is all concern, no anger at all. That’s not new—like she said, choreographed relationships were her bread and butter, she knows how to keep a man off his guard—but the way it cuts across her heart is.

“Not  _me_.” Her hands are one of the few parts of her body where the thorns are only on the outside.

His loose hold on her grows firm. “Okay then.” He rests their hands on the blanket like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like he’s just another in a long string of men she’s shared romantic moments with. Like it isn’t hurting him just to touch her.

But it isn’t. Natural. Nothing about this is. The moment might be—and that’s a first for her—but everything else? Him? Her? She could laugh if it wouldn’t tear up her throat and looks back to the horizon—just in time too—to get some stability back.

“What’s it look like?” he asks, voice soft and reverent after long seconds.

Grassy fields and hills stretch out before them, a river of gold pooling at their end. The sky’s gone purple, then red, then pink, and now a glossy white where the sun’s just beginning to crest the black hills.

“You really can’t see it? Not even…” She’s not sure yet how to ask about his powers—the ones that aren’t teleportation and blindness because those are kind of obvious.

“I can,” he admits, a wry twist to his voice. She hates when he talks like that, hates it more than when he’s all calm and patient and begging her to let nature—as if nature has anything to do with this—take its course. “But not like you. The good part for me was about an hour ago, when the stars started going out. I remember they just sort of fade into the sky as it gets lighter-”

There’s a question mark hanging in the middle of that sentence so she hums an affirmative.

“-but for me it’s not like that at all. They kind of  _pop_. Their essences sizzle and explode like popcorn in a pan.” He tips his head back far, his spine arching so he’s turned towards the opposite end of the sky. “They fill up the dome of the world, one by one, and when it’s over, it’s day.” He jerks upright again just when she’s starting to wonder if it’d be better to cut his back open on her arm or to let him crack his head on the rocks behind them. He grins at her. “Warmth. Light. Life. All that good stuff.”

“And you can sense it?”

He shrugs. “I can sense the quantum energies. And with practice…”

She focuses on the sunrise again. “You can tell the difference between them all.” She’s tired of his speeches about practice and patience and perseverance.

In typical fashion, he ignores her  _fuck off_  tone. “Works with people too. At first it was just big stuff—the elders I could tell from children, humans from Inhumans, men from women.”

She stares hard at the horizon, letting her eyes water but refusing to blink or look away. It burns but it’s better than listening to his damn preaching about the “beauty of terrigenesis” or whatever.

“After a while I could tell individuals apart. I can tell Jiaying apart from Skye apart from you.”

“Well I hope so.” She doesn’t mean to engage, really, but her sharp tongue was the only part of the old Raina that still fit with this new body she’s got.

“It’s deeper than looks.”

Oh, god. This is gonna be one of those lectures again. Did he really bring her halfway around the world for this?

His hand tightens around hers and she  _knows_  it’s gotta be hurting him. She can feel him bending close, that big forehead of his brushing the tips of her quills. “I can’t tell when the sun really rises because it doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s so big, you know? All that energy hits me way before it actually gets here. But I knew when it started this time.”

She’s so busy trying not to listen that it takes a few seconds for his words to reach her. When they do, she pulls back, ensuring she doesn’t scratch him when she turns to face him. (Idiot’s so close she’d blind him if he wasn’t already.)

“How?” she asks, genuinely curious what’s so different about now.

“It made you happy.” He smiles in that way that makes the thorns inside her go all soft. “And when you’re happy, you’re the prettiest thing in my whole world. Prettier than stars even.”

Her body’s all brand new, nothing human left about it, so it doesn’t mean a thing that her heart stutters in her chest or her mouth goes dry.

“You’re an idiot,” she says, facing the sunrise again and not caring at all if she cuts him.

“And you’re beautiful,” he says. Again. He called her that the day they met and it-

It doesn’t matter what it made her feel because it’s already been established that this body doesn’t work the way her old one did. She probably just had indigestion or something. Probably does again now thanks to all that terrible Afterlife food.

So the smile she can’t seem to wipe away no matter how hard she tries, that doesn’t mean anything either. It’s certainly not because of him.

  



End file.
